Interviews News - Page 38

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After posting his fourth straight submission victory in the UFC at UFC Fight Night 13, lightweight Nate Diaz (9-2 MMA, 4-0 UFC) has been mentioned as a possible opponent for many of the division's top contenders. Diaz, however, is only interested in one of them: former cast mate Manny Gamburyan (8-2 MMA, 2-1 UFC).
"The UFC decides that for me," Diaz said regarding his next opponent. "Manny (Gamburyan) wants to fight me. But you know what? I want to fight him too just as much."
"I don't like them," Diaz said bluntly. "I don't mean nothing bad to anyone else in the sport. Everybody's just trying to make their money and fight their fights and do their thing, just like I am. But those guys? F*** them. They're cocky, they talk s***, and they want to act tough. But when they're by themselves, they try to say 'What's up,' you know... I'm like, 'We're not friends, dude.'"

UFC Fighter and all-round entertainer, Clay Guida recently bounced back into the spotlight with a quick victory of Samy Shiavo, eclipsing memories of his previous loss to Roger Huerta.
With bold ambitions and a training regime to match, Clay took the time to speak to Ironlife.com about his career and the possibility of one day fighting for the UFC Lightweight title.
How did your fight go with Frenchman, Samy Shiavo?

I caught up with Frankie Edgar after his hard fought decision loss to Gray Maynard at UFC Fight Night 13 to discuss some issues that arose during the fight as well as looking at what’s next for Edgar in the lightweight division.

.Martin, who's from Chicago, has given up his UFC dream for now and will step in the ring as a boxer for the first time Friday night as part of an ``8 Count Productions'' card. Martin will face Ricardo Upchurch at the Odeum Sports and Expo Center in Villa Park in a scheduled four-rounder. He'll fight at the 190-pound cruiserweight level, which should alleviate a problem he had making 185 pounds with the UFC.

“… we’ll see what happens. I think it’s going to be an interesting fight. Fedor just fought a pretty tall opponent in Hong Man Choi, so obviously he’s been in that mode of dealing with a guy that size, but I think Tim is a little more seasoned fighter than Hong Man has proved to be. But Hong Man wasn’t easy so it will be interesting to see how Emelianenko deals with him and a pretty good indicator for me, having just fought Tim this last year, as to where I stand and how things might go if I finally get the chance to fight Fedor.”

Away from fights since his loss at Pride 34 at 2007, when was knocked out by Thierry Sokoudjou, the athlete from Brazilian Top Team, Ricardo Arona, told in exclusive interview to TATAME about his life, the time away from rings and his training to come back to the MMA, commented Rodrigo Minotauro’s and Wanderlei Silva’s fight at UFC. Check below the complete interview with Ricardo Arona.

“I would gladly participate in such a tournament. UFC (American mixed martial arts), for example, won’t take me, because if they let me in there, I would beat everybody and take the belt to Russia. They don’t want that. They want their own American champions. We already beat everyone in Japan, even though no one bet on us.”.

Alexander Emelianenko (13-3) — the younger brother of Pride FC Heavyweight Champion Fedor Emelianenko — states that the UFC will not enlist his services because he can defeat any fighter in the division and he would bring the title back to Russia. He also confirms in the interview that he and Fedor would never fight one another.

“I’m the CEO, so I’m going to make the matches. Well, they wanted a say. They wanted to be able to say, ‘we don’t like that match … we want to do something else.’ … I couldn’t make money with him. There was just no way we could make money with that kind of overhead. That became apparent. To take all of our investors’ money and put it around Fedor, it just didn’t make business sense…. I think people understand that I tried everything possible to make this happen. In business, sometimes it just doesn’t work. We bounced back, I think, very well. Getting Tim Sylvia is a huge coup for us. Without him, what would we have? We locked onto him. We locked onto Rothwell. Now, I actually feel better about where we’re headed than I did before. I would trade Fedor for Rothwell and Sylvia every day

With UFC legends such as Ken Shamrock and David "Tank" Abbott suffering recent knockout losses that bordered on humiliating, it might at first concern you to find that a near 50-year-old Dan "The Beast" Severn (84-15-7) has participated in 10 MMA fights in the past 16 months.
Gotta love The Beast

On April 19th in Montreal, Travis Lutter and Rich Franklin will face off in a bout to determine who rises to the top of the UFC’s Middleweight landscape. While Franklin has donned UFC gold in the past, Travis Lutter remains unacquainted with the Middleweight strap, but is confident that it will only be a matter of time. MMAFrenzy.com’s Eric Shapiro recently had the opportunity to speak personally with former TUF Alum and Brazilian JiuJitsu specialist Travis Lutter, who shared his thoughts on upcoming opponent Rich Franklin, The Ultimate Fighter series, a grudge against Anderson Silva, and everything in between. Enjoy.

The following interview was conducted by the Korean MMA site MFight with Fedor Emelianenko:
Q:You will be one of the carriers of the Olympic torch for the Beijing Olympics in St. Petersburg on April 5. How does it feel to represent Russia?
A:(Fedor):I feel very good. I was chosen as one of 5 carriers of the torch. I'm very happy and proud.
(Finkelstein): Many other famous Russian athletes will be carrying the torch including world champion boxer Nikolai Valuev.

Imagine putting your training, girlfriend, everything on hold because you were able to pursue your dream.
For a select few and me, we got that chance -- or so we thought.
When I was told I was selected for "The Ultimate Fighter 7," I was told the basics, which included: don't tell anyone, be here by this date, and be ready to go. There were no caveats, but also as I think back, there were not a lot of "welcome aboard" or "glad to have you" comments being made either. It would of stood out, but my trainers and of course my family were telling me congrats and all and filling my head with positive thoughts.

Mike Whitehead recently left IFL and is now premiering in his first full contact standup fight with XFA. The former UFC fighter from TUF 2 talks about fight organizations including De La Hoya's upcoming Golden Boy and teaches our host, Dave Farra a few moves against Michelle Waterson at the Warrior Training Center.

"i'm always watching out for the comments here (in the blog) and in PVT (portaldovaletudo.com.br). for my surprise i saw that someone changed my nickname from Axe Murderer to Chump Murderer, but what i have to say is that the nickname is only aplied to one person because the only chump i fought was Quinton (Jackson).

Kenny Florian wasn't supposed to be a fighter.
He was a smart kid. Focused, always smiling.
His parents, immigrants from Peru, preached hard work and education. That's how his father, Augustin, had become a surgeon. He wanted Kenny to be a lawyer. He also wanted his children to be able to defend themselves, though.
The Florians were essentially the lone Latino family in a neighborhood about 25 miles outside of Boston. Augustin had earned a black belt in judo and maintained a fierce loyalty for Latino boxers. Didn't matter if his man was 1-40.

Mauricio Rua is recovering in Brazil after surgery a few weeks ago on his knee.
"The surgery was very quick, lasted 50 minutes, was quiet," Rua told Sherdog.com. "Now I hope for healing and I think here in about two months I can return to training slowly, very cautiously."
The Brazilian light heavyweight ruptured the ACL in his left knee while preparing at his academy for a bout against Chuck Liddell . "Shogun" said he had tried to explode into a maneuver while training with Vitor Miranda , and his knee moved strangely.
"Depending on my recovery, I think that I can fight again in September or October," Rua said. "We always talked with Dana White and also would like to thank him because the UFC offered me a doctor, a physical therapist -- all to get me help. They have been very attentive with me."

EliteXC promoter Gary Shaw went on a rampage Thursday against California State Athletic Commission executive officer Armando Garcia for pulling Nick Diaz from Saturday's Strikeforce/Elite XC card.
"What happened (Wednesday) was a travesty to Nick Diaz," he said, noting Diaz was willing to take a drug test and was planning on passing it, but was pulled because he had revealed when getting his medicals done, that he had a medicinal marijuana card as treatment for attention deficit disorder.
Marijuana is on the banned substance list in California, and Diaz's biggest win of his career, over Takanori Gomi last year, was stripped in Nevada because he tested positive for the drug. Garcia said he couldn't publicly comment on the situation other than say there wasn't time to go through the procedures necessary to clear Diaz to fight.

Now that it’s clear both Silva and Jones want the fight, there’s just one question: What does the UFC think? Turns out, they’re not so crazy about it. Not yet, anyway.
“We’ve spoken about it,” Soares said. “At first, I think there was a lot of resistance. They don’t seem too into it, to be honest with you. We’ve heard from certain people that there’s just no way that this can happen. But never say never, you know.”
Recently the jokesters over at Bodog went ahead and handicapped the bout, despite the fact that it’s only talk at this point, and they pegged Jones as a heavy favorite with a -2800 line. Silva is going off at +1400, which is understandable since he’s never had a real pro boxing match and Jones, you know, has had a few.
Soares, who may well be biased, warns us against underestimating Silva.
“I think Anderson would be able to put up a good fight against Roy Jones. That’s my opinion. Maybe it’s unrealistic. When you talk to some people and read some of these threads, there’s people who swear up and down that it’s the stupidest thing to believe Anderson would do it, but I don’t know. Maybe I’m tainted. I’m not saying that Anderson’s going to go in there and knock him out, but I think Anderson is that skilled that he could make it a fight.”